Latent Commons
Been there, done that!
Networked Collective
Networked Collective has been working together for a few years. As the word implies, this collective stems from a network, there is not a core, or center, but at most a temporary focal point. The notion was coined by Okwui Enwezor in his text The Artist as Producer in Times of Crisis, and defined as: ‘a flexible, non-permanent course of affiliation, privileging collaboration on project basis than on a permanent alliance.’
Collectively they work within residencies, projects, exhibitions, plays, informal gatherings and on publications. From these assemblies a fundamental research-area came to the core: a tension between on the one hand the social process of working together and living together, and on the other hand formal, autonomous qualities of works that are the outcomes of that process.
The members of the collective that will give this workshop: Samieh Shahcheraghi (artist), Gijsje
Heemskerk (artist), Marijn van Kreij (artist), Liza Wolters (artist), Jochem van Laarhoven (artist), Chrys Amaya Michailidis (artist), Bas van den Hurk (artist), Benjamin Schoones (artist), Lotte Driessen (actor), Matea Bakula (artist), Sofie Hollander (artist), Marisa Goedhart (artist), Loran van de Wier (artist), Fatemeh Heidari (artist) and Reinout Scholten van Aschat (actor).
Workshop
With the 6-week Collective Making program we invite you to become part of our collective and
experience what it means to work as a collective body. Important for us is the idea of ‘becoming’
and ‘not-knowing’. In her book The Mushroom at the End of the World, Anna L. Tsing coins the
term latent commons, which she describes as hidden, fugitive moments of entanglement
between living beings in a complex world. These commons may not be directly visible, as they
develop themselves in interaction, cooperation, competition and desires between different
beings and environments. When we move, create, feel, talk and eat together, we try to become
aware and experience what these commons could be.
Our collective practice and form is one of being a multitude, with different opinions, disciplines,
forms of engagements, roles, positions, searching for ways of relating to and communicating
with each other. To work our way through differences, similarities and encounters, to frame a
space and time as we work. How to understand work as a process of making and receiving, and
to understand receiving as a productive act in itself that can again activate new processes of
making and understanding, and through which new notions of collectivity may arise.
Set up
During the six weeks we will work together collectively. We’ll make strolls in the park, discuss texts, make theatrical performances, film, write poetry, cook and eat, jam, print, draw, paint and make zines. During the first four weeks we invite you to participate in different workshops.
The workshops will culminate in a ‘library of possibilities’; out of which you will also create a zine. The final weeks can be used to collect your thoughts and ideas of what you’ve experienced and make this, the last day of the program, into a self-organized presentation.